The desire to emigrate is a fever in the arteries of every red-blooded Punjabi. The phenomenon occasionally hits the headlines when something particularly sensational occurs as, for instance, the detention last week of an MP caught for human trafficking. Unfortunately, the focus of the state continues to be on tightening immigration controls and upgrading legal responses to detection and prosecution, rather than on the human angle of why this happens in the first place. Punjab has been a principal source of emigrant labour. People in the state have risked their very survival in their search for prosperity. They have submitted to engaging in occupations considered unclean or beneath contempt back in their own countries, in order to attain ‘the foreign mystique’ and earn some dollars. They may consider themselves as belonging to a martial race, but have meekly submitted to racist insults and humiliations abroad.At one level, this is a saga of a people’s tremendous capacity for physical and mental endurance. A saga shaped not merely by poverty, but by an oppressive agrarian system, indifferent governance, and of course the personal urge to enhance one’s social status. It has seen people try and smuggle themselves into the undercarriages of aircraft in sub-zero temperatures, risk travelling in overcrowded boats (which sometimes capsize as one did off the coast of Malta in 1996), endure travelling in extremely rough conditions, and sometimes without food or water. A constant attempt is made to carve out new routes to destinations in Southeast Asia, East Africa, Eastern Europe and North America. Sometimes families have migrated repeatedly over generations — from one destination in Africa to another; from Eastern Europe to Canada, and so on.People have been moving out from Punjab in search of greener pastures from times immemorial. But the early years of the 20th century saw a group of men travel by train from Punjab to Calcutta, and from thence in an open-deck steamer to Hong Kong. From Hong Kong, they boarded a Canadian Pacific liner to Victoria, Canada. These early emigrants were Sikh soldiers and farmers, mainly single males. The trans-Pacific steamer fare cost as much as a hectare of agricultural land in the first decade of the 20th century. Once abroad, they were exposed to exclusionist policies which in turn led to riots. The next wave of immigration — from 1909 to the mid-1960s — was marked by battles against various anti-immigrant restrictions and racist policies. The ‘Komagatu Maru’ incident came to symbolise this. The passengers of this ship were despatched to prisons, and a few were even hanged.The third phase marked a distinct shift. You now saw professionalised labour moving out legally. This put manual workers from Punjab in a disadvantageous position. There was now a near-absence of a supportive regime to provide them with the opportunity to compete on a legal and equal basis for jobs in international labour markets through the building up of personal capacities and skills. There was, besides, no policy catering to reuniting divided families. It was also quite clear that insufficient attention was paid to safeguarding the human and citizenship rights of emigrants.Illegal emigration from Punjab today is linked to rising prosperity. The lesson people here have learnt is that the expansion of markets and the spread of commodity chains to newer areas generates new work opportunities. But, ironically, those who dare to explore new labour markets are often forced to do so illegally. Globalisation has facilitated the unregulated flow of capital and products across borders, but has not evolved mechanisms to facilitate the free flow of labour. Further, migrants are still not entitled to global standards of equity, justice, citizenship and livelihood rights.India needs to examine this issue in an informed manner and with empathy. As for Punjab, it needs to be more pro-active on the issue. The energy and potential of its youth have to be channelised in a productive fashion. The militancy of the eighties and early nineties can, in part, be attributed to the widespread alienation of the young people of that generation. Neither the state, nor the country, can afford a repeat of that turbulent history.The writer is director, Institute for Development and Communication, Chandigarh
